“War is Good for Business”: U.S. is the Largest Military Spender Worldwide. Austerity for Americans, Billions for the Military!

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• Daniel 7:23 (New King James Version)
  23 “Thus he said:
  ‘The fourth beast shall be
  A fourth kingdom on earth,
  Which shall be different from all other kingdoms,
  And shall devour the whole earth,
  Trample it and break it in pieces.
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  Daniel 11:36-39 (New King James Version)
  ³⁶ “Then the king shall do according to his own will: he shall exalt and magnify himself above every god, shall speak blasphemies against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the wrath has been accomplished; for what has been determined shall be done. ³⁷ He shall regard neither the God^[a] of his fathers nor the desire of women, nor regard any god; for he shall exalt himself above them all.
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  ³⁸ But in their place he shall honor a god of fortresses; and a god which his fathers did not know he shall honor with gold and silver, with precious stones and pleasant things. ³⁹ Thus he shall act against the strongest fortresses with a foreign god, which he shall acknowledge, and advance its glory; and he shall cause them to rule over many, and divide the land for gain.
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• “War is Good for Business”: U.S. is the Largest Military Spender Worldwide. Austerity for Americans, Billions for the Military! 
  by Prof. Lawrence S. Wittner, http://www.globalresearch.ca/ 
  The U.S. government’s military spending excess — when compared with the rest of the world — is down somewhat due mostly to troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan but still accounts for 39 percent of the global total,  according to a new international study.
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  According to a report just released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), world military expenditures in 2012 totaled $1.75 trillion. And, the report revealed that, as in all recent decades, the world’s biggest military spender by far was the U.S. government, whose expenditures for war and preparations for war amounted to $682 billion — 39 percent of the global total.
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  The United States spent more than four times as much on the military as China (the number two big spender) and more than seven times as much as Russia (which ranked third). Although the military expenditures of the United States dipped a bit in 2012, largely thanks to the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, they remained 69 percent higher than in 2001.
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  U.S. military supremacy is even more evident when the U.S. military alliance system is brought into the picture, for the United States and its allies accounted for the vast bulk of world military spending in 2012. NATO members, including the United States, spent $1 trillion dollars on the military.
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  Thus, although studies have found that the United States ranks 17^th among nations in education, 26^th in infant mortality, and 37^th in life expectancy and overall health, there is no doubt that it ranks first when it comes to war.
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  This Number 1 status might not carry much weight among Americans scavenging for food in garbage dumpsters, among Americans unable to afford medical care, or among Americans shivering in poorly heated homes. Even many Americans in the more comfortable middle class might be more concerned with how they are going to afford the skyrocketing costs of a college education, how they can get by with fewer teachers, firefighters and police in their communities, and how their hospitals, parks, roads, bridges and other public facilities can be maintained.
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  Of course, there is a direct connection between the massive level of U.S. military spending and belt-tightening austerity at home: most federal discretionary spending goes for war.
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  The Lockheed Martin Corp.’s new F-35 joint strike fighter plane provides a good example of the U.S. government’s warped priorities. It is estimated that this military weapons system will cost the U.S. government $1.5 trillion by the time of its completion. Does this Cold War-style warplane, designed for fighting enemies the U.S. government no longer faces, represent a good investment for Americans?
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  After 12 years of production, costing $396 billion, the F-35 has exhibited numerous design and engineering flaws, has been grounded twice, and has never been flown in combat. Given the immense military advantage the United States already has over all other nations in the world, is this most expensive weapons system in world history really necessary? And aren’t there other, better things that Americans could be doing with their money?
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  Of course, the same is true for other countries. Is there really any justification for the nations of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America to be increasing their level of military spending — as they did in 2012 — while millions of their people live in dire poverty? Projections indicate that, by 2015, about a billion people around the world will be living on an income of about $1.25 per day. When, in desperation, they riot for bread, will the government officials of these nations, echoing Marie Antoinette, suggest that they eat the new warplanes and missiles?
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US ‘defence’ (war really) budget is well over US$1T when all the discretionary spending are added ! It is over 50% of tax revenues!

Discretionary spending in the FY 2013 budget was slashed to $1.264 trillion from $1.319 trillion budgeted in FY 2012. America is a WAR economy!

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Queen’s Speech: Monarch to get Huge Pay Rise as Brits Tighten Belts!

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Power Cut For 30,000 Greek Households Monthly!

Greece social unrest. Photograph: Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images

• Power Cut For 30,000 Greek Households Monthly! 
  by Andy Dabilis, http://greece.greekreporter.com/ 
  Unable to pay the cost of electricity or a doubled property tax that is put electric bills, the power is being turned off to about 1,000 Greek households every day, the Public Power Corporation (PPC) has acknowledged, with arrearages at more than 1.3 billion euros ($1.56 billion) at the end of 2012.
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  Crushed by pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions demanded by international lenders in return for bailout loans, many Greeks are unable to afford monthly expenses have been cutting down even on food and other necessities.
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  PPC data showed that some 700,000 customers had had their debts rearranged with new payment plans by the end of last year, up from 400,000 at the end of 2011 but the agency expects the problem to get worse. Power is not being turned off to government agencies that owe millions of euros nor reportedly to big companies who haven’t paid as the government is fearful that could lead to more jobs being lost.
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  There are growing lines at PPC offices daily with people anxiously trying to arrange payment plans. The doubled property tax imposed by former finance minister Evangelos Venizelos in 2011 was supposed to be for one year only but has continued. Some customers are asking for their power to be reconnected if they pay part of the bill.
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Union Crack: EU Govt ‘Austerity’ Policies Go Against People’s Will !

Foodstamp Recipients Hit Record, Alongside Record Dow Jones And Record Debt: 20% Of Eligible Americans On EBT!

• Go back to sleep people! Nothing to see here. DowJones making a new record high, the economy is recovering! Yeah right!? Pigs fly all the time!
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  Foodstamp Recipients Hit Record, Alongside Record Dow Jones And Record Debt: 20% Of Eligible Americans On EBT! 
  by Tyler Durden, www.zerohedge.com
  Record Dow Jones, record US debt ($16,701,846,937,879.74), and now, once more, record number of Americans on foodstamps. According to the USDA, an all time high of 47,791,966 Americans closed 2012 in possession of the highly desired Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card, managed by who else but JPMorgan. And with a civilian non-institutional population of 244.4 million in December, this means that a record 19.56% of eligible Americans are on Foodstamps.
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  In December an additional 109,924 Americans became reliant on foodstamps for their poverty-level needs, bringing the total to 47.8 million. Number of US households on foodstamps: also a record of 23.1 million, with the average monthly benefit of $277.09.
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Food Stamp Use Hits Record Levels!

Class Divide: UK Masses Slide into Poverty as Austerity Ramps Up!

Alex Jones: The System is Bankrupting Poor People!

Retail Apocalypse: Why Are Major Retail Chains All Over America Collapsing?

• Retail Apocalypse: Why Are Major Retail Chains All Over America Collapsing?
  by Michael Snyder, Activist Post 
  If the economy is improving, then why are many of the largest retail chains in America closing hundreds of stores? When I was growing up, Sears, J.C. Penney, Best Buy and RadioShack were all considered to be unstoppable retail powerhouses. But now it is being projected that all of them will close hundreds of stores before the end of 2013. Even Wal-Mart is running into problems. A recent internal Wal-Mart memo that was leaked to Bloomberg described February sales as a “total disaster”. So why is this happening? Why are major retail chains all over America collapsing? Is the “retail apocalypse” upon us?
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  Well, the truth is that this is just another sign that the U.S. economy is falling apart right in front of our eyes. Incomes are declining, taxes are going up, government dependence is at an all-time high, and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the percentage of the U.S. labor force that is employed has been steadily falling since 2006. The top 10% of all income earners in the U.S. are still doing very well, but most U.S. consumers are either flat broke or are drowning in debt. The large disposable incomes that the big retail chains have depended upon in the past simply are not there anymore. So retail chains all over the United States are now closing up unprofitable stores. This is especially true in low-income areas.
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  When you step back and take a look at the bigger picture, the rapid decline of some of our largest retail chains really is stunning. It is happening already in some areas, but soon half empty malls and boarded up storefronts will litter the landscapes of cities all over America.
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‘Starve Society to Impose Unseen Poverty’: EU Chiefs’ Way Out of Crisis!

47 Million Americans are on Food Stamps, our Bread Lines are Invisible!

20 Facts About The Collapse Of Europe That Everyone Should Know!

• THE PROTOCOLS OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION (Satanic) Protocol XII – Control of the Press
  …. WE CONTROL THE PRESS
  4. NOT A SINGLE ANNOUNCEMENT WILL REACH THE PUBLIC WITHOUT OUR CONTROL. Even now this is already being attained by us inasmuch as all news items are received by a few agencies, in whose offices they are focused from all parts of the world. These agencies will then be already entirely ours and will give publicity only to what we dictate to them.
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• THE PROTOCOLS OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION (Satanic) PROTOCOL No. 10
  1. … I beg you to bear in mind that governments and people are content in the political with outside appearances. ….
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• 20 Facts About The Collapse Of Europe That Everyone Should Know! 
  by Tyler Durden, http://www.zerohedge.com/
  Originally posted at The Coming Depression blog,
  The economic implosion of Europe is accelerating. Even while the mainstream media continues to proclaim that the financial crisis in Europe has been “averted”, the economic statistics that are coming out of Europe just continue to get worse.
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  Manufacturing activity in Europe has been contracting month after month, the unemployment rate in the eurozone has hit yet another brand new record high, and the official unemployment rates in both Greece and Spain are now much higher than the peak unemployment rate in the United States during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The economic situation in Europe is far worse than it was a year ago, and it is going to continue to get worse as austerity continues to take a huge toll on the economies of the eurozone.
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  It would be hard to understate how bad things have gotten – particularly in southern Europe. The truth is that most of southern Europe is experiencing a full-blown economic depression right now. Sadly, most Americans are paying very little attention to what is going on across the Atlantic. But they should be watching, because this is what happens when nations accumulate too much debt. The United States has the biggest debt burden of all, and eventually what is happening over in Spain, France, Italy, Portugal and Greece is going to happen over here as well.
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  The following are 20 facts about the collapse of Europe that everyone should know…
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  #1 10 Months: Manufacturing activity in both France and Germany has contracted for 10 months in a row.
  #2 11.8 Percent: The unemployment rate in the eurozone has now risen to 11.8 percent – a brand new all-time high.
  #3 17 Months: In November, Italy experienced the sharpest decline in retail sales that it had experienced in 17 months.
  #4 20 Months: Manufacturing activity in Spain has contracted for 20 months in a row.
  #5 20 Percent: It is estimated that bad loans now make up approximately 20 percent of all domestic loans in the Greek banking system at this point.
  #6 22 Percent: A whopping 22 percent of the entire population of Ireland lives in jobless households.
  #7 26 Percent: The unemployment rate in Greece is now 26 percent. A year ago it was only 18.9 percent.
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128 Million Americans are Now on Government Programmes. Can America Survive as the World’s Superpower?

• 128 million Americans are now on government programmes. Can America survive as the world’s superpower?  
  by Nile Gardiner, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ 
  I have just read a staggering report written by my colleagues Patrick D. Tyrell and William W. Beach for the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis (I direct the Margaret Thatcher Centre for Freedom at Heritage.) It is a real eye-opener for anyone who cares about America’s future as the world’s superpower, on either side of the Atlantic. Ironically, Britain, through the tremendous determination of Iain Duncan Smith and his team at the Department of Work and Pensions, is starting to roll back the welfare state, precisely at the same time the current US administration is expanding it.
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  The United States isn’t just gliding towards a continental European-style future of vast welfare systems, economic decline, and massive debts – it is accelerating towards it at full speed. Or as Acton Institute research director Samuel Gregg puts it in his excellent new book published today by Encounter, America is already “becoming Europe,” with the United States moving far closer to a European-style welfare state than most Americans realize.
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  Tyrell and Beach point out in their Heritage paper, which is based on extensive analysis of the recently released March 2011 US Census Bureau Current Population Survey (CPS), that more than two in five Americans are now on government programs:
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  The number of people receiving benefits from the federal government in the United States has grown from under 94 million people in 2000 to more than 128 million people in 2011. That means that 41.3 percent of the US population is now on a federal government program.
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  Just as worrying is the rate of increase in spending on these federal government programmes:
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  Between 1988 and 2011, spending on dependence-creating federal government programs has increased 180 percent versus “only” a 62 percent increase in the number of people who are enrolled in federal government programs, and a 27 percent increase in the population. Not only are more people enrolled in government programs than ever before, but more US taxpayer dollars are being spent on each recipient every year.
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Lindsey Williams: The Illuminati’s New World Order Plan for the Next 4 Years! Time Out with Kevin Gallagher 18 Dec 2012.

Keiser Report: Monetized Genocide!

• In this episode, Max Keiser  and Stacy Herbert look at central banking monkeys performing cannonballs into the global dark pools, the backlash against quantitative easing and the Queen ticking orf the Bank of England. In the second half, Max Keiser talks to economist Sandeep Jaitly of FeketeResearch.com about silver backwardation and a monetary path that will throw us *all* into such poverty that none of us will be able satisfy our ends.

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